Ardnahoe New Make

One thing I love about Dramfest is that you often get to chat to the distillers and sometimes even try new make. I like what Hunter Laing does with their bottlings and when I heard they had opened an Islay distillery I was very interested to try some of the distllate. It's a family owned distillery which is rare and the first open on Islay since 2005 with Kilchoman. Every aspect of the set up they have gone top notch. It has Oregon pine fermenters, two lantern shaped pot stills (a 13,000 litre wash still and an 11,000 litre spirit still), the longest lyne arm in Scotland apparently and worm tub condensers. The distillate is made from malt peated to between 40 and 45 PPM from Port Ellen Maltings and undergoes long slow fermentation, around 72 hours. Jim McEwan came out of retirement, consulted on the project and joked that finding the cut point in the spirit was a difficult as giving birth. I also am quite excited that they have a lot of different caskings...the diversity reminding me of Benriach. Primarily they have about 70% first-fill bourbon barrels; then about 20 or 25% first fill ex-oloroso hogsheads and some butts. However they also have some other wines casks, such as Port, Madeira, Muscat, Rioja, and some rum (they do the Kill Devil range) so i'm looking forward to hopefully some great wine and port cask finishing. Anyhow the new make was awesome very biscuity fruity and smokey. Very much hope they have good casks to do it justice.